1957 Chevy Gasser – Cloning Without The Side Effects

"I wanted to 're-hot rod' Tri-Five Chevys by making them affordable again. We built this car in 15 days, and it was cool enough for HOT ROD Magazine. How kickass is that?" - Chris Sondles

Here are four reasons to hate Rick
Duffin: 1) He didn’t need a welder
to build this car, 2) there’s not a
single used part on it (including
the body and chassis), 3) the build
didn’t cost six figures, and 4) it only took
15 days to complete. Feel like setting your
checkbook on fire and stuffing your current
Tri-Five Chevy project into the nearest
Dumpster now? We understand. We’re a bit
envious ourselves.
GM isn’t building new ’57 Chevys again,
so how did Rick get his hands on one? Here’s
the skinny: Woody’s Hot Rodz (Bright, Indiana;
WoodysHotRodz.com) is the primary
distributor for Real-Deal Steel’s afermarket
Tri-Five bodies, which are lifesavers in the
restoration world. Bare shells go for $11,500,
and complete bodies with doors, trunk lid,
and quarter-panels hung and aligned cost
less than $17,000 in coupe and convertible
form. You could drop that much coin fixing
a rusted-out hulk, and it still wouldn’t be as
sound as a new body.

Woody’s built this car using nothing but new steel. fat means no
trips to the media blaster, no surprise rust
repairs, and zero warped body panels. Just
uncrate, prime and paint, and move onto the
next fun part of the build.
Woody’s also builds brand-new chassis
for Tri-Fives that cost less than 10 grand.
Combo the body and chassis into a complete
roller, like the one used to build this
car, and it can be had for about 25 large. You
can choose from the Full Wood straight-axle
chassis or Hot Wood cruiser A-arm design
and be miles ahead of any restoration shop
while bolting together a new car that’s ready
for shine in no time. Grab a drivetrain in a
box, toss in a new interior, and you’ve got a
fresh-ofi-the-lot car with all the person ality
of a classic and none of the setbacks of a
rotisserie restoration. fis was the recipe for
the 15-day build of Rick’s ’57.
fe new/old hot rod idea is that of Chris
Sondles, proprietor of Woody’s and a lifelong
Tri-Five fanatic. Decades spent Txing
up weather-beaten iron taught him that the
restoration process took much of the fun
out of the build for customers and all of the
money out of their wallets. Chris knew there
was a better way to build hot rods, and marrying
his chassis with Real-Deal’s body was
a natural move.

Once the two companies worked out the compatibility details, it was
on like Donkey Kong.
Te build team for this tribute to Mr.
Gasket founder Joe Hrudka’s D/Gas race car
included Matt Baldwin, Joe Shinliver, Dane
Heninger, Joe Whitaker, and Randy Irwin.
Te group feverishly tore through the build
to debut it at the ’11 NSRA Nats, dropping
a fresh 396 and Muncie four-speed between
the rails for nostalgic, gear-mashing power,
and Rocket wheels with Coker cheater
slicks under the fenders for a retro look. A
Speedway Engineering front end helped
nail the stance. Te interior has the requisite
old-school flavor, thanks to a Hurst shifer,
Moon gas pedal, and dash-mounted tach.
Yup, this is a car we’d all like to beat on,
and because it doesn’t have an other-worldly
price tag, we wouldn’t have an ounce of guilt
for doing so. Plus, if we parked it on a guardrail,
it’s not like we couldn’t clone another
one.

We’ve Temporarily Removed Comments

As part of our ongoing efforts to make HotRod.com better, faster, and easier for you to use, we’ve temporarily removed comments as well as the ability to comment. We’re testing and reviewing options to possibly bring comments back. As always, thanks for reading HotRod.com.